Sustaining the Fight: Challenges of Distributed Maritime Operations
The MOC
By
Julian Guevara
July 24, 2025
The emergence of peer competition and the increase of adversarial capability has driven the U.S. Navy to adopt the concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) as a guiding framework for how it will fight the next high-end war at sea. DMO presents a compelling vision for building a combat-credible force capable of maintaining maritime dominance in a contested environment. However, to properly implement this concept, a more clearly defined and rigorous approach is essential. As the Navy works to modernize and operationalize DMO, it must address two critical sustainment challenges: (1) logistics and (2) munition stockpiles.
Defining DMO
DMO is a fleet-level warfighting concept that provides a modern framework for achieving large-scale sea control and power projection against peer competitors. Departing from the Navy’s traditional reliance on concentrated carrier strike groups, DMO responds to high-end threats by dispersing forces across wider areas while concentrating effects through networked operations. Through an agile and asymmetric approach, the concept employs kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities that leverage deception and distribute command, ultimately generating decision advantages that affect offensive and defensive operations.
The proliferation of advanced anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities has shaped the Navy’s shift toward long-range precision weapons and sophisticated sensor networks. By diversifying its shooter portfolio and spreading warships out, the Navy adapts its force structure to the changing perceptions of hider-finder competition while delivering capabilities that achieve lethal and persistent effects within the weapons engagement zone. As operational environments become more contested, DMO serves to increase survivability while achieving greater lethality. Through distribution the Navy employs nontraditional schemes of maneuver and force posturing to facilitate counter-targeting. Simultaneously, the distribution and integration of modern long-range fires called upon by DMO build dynamic kill chains that generate decision advantages and overwhelming fire through the aggregation of distributed commands that maintain unity of action.
To build enduring warfighting advantages, DMO must be translated into concrete, actionable measures. Without greater specificity, the Navy risks failing to identify and overcome the challenges that hinder the concept’s operational viability.
Sustainment Challenges
Logistics
To achieve combat viability, the United States Navy must prioritize overcoming the logistical hurdles posed by a widely distributed fleet. The core tenets of DMO—long-range fires and a distributed force structure—expose significant gaps in the Navy’s ability to sustain operations across vast and contested maritime domains.
The increased distance of warships heightens the vulnerability of the Combat Logistics Force (CLF). In a peer conflict, Indo-Pacific Command will require these essential but soft targets to operate deep within contested environments—where they would be highly susceptible to adversarial targeting. Drawing from the historical precedent of Japan’s failure to target U.S. logistics during the Pacific War, today’s adversaries are likely to prioritize degrading U.S. logistics to cripple naval operations. With a current shortage of surface combatants to escort logistics ships, the CLF must evolve. Future platforms will need to be faster and more survivable, equipped with advanced kinetic and non-kinetic self-defense systems to keep pace with and support the dynamic needs of a distributed fleet.
Additionally, the operational shift toward surface combatant strikes creates an unprecedented demand for long-range precision fires. High intensity conflict will rapidly deplete ship magazines, creating a critical need for forward rearmament of Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells during a protracted conflict. By achieving VLS rearming at sea, the Navy will be able to keep warships in theater while incorporating numerous mobile reload locations critical for sustaining and expanding the volume and tempo of long-range fires. The recent successful demonstration of the Transferable Reload At-sea Method on an underway warship marks a pivotal first step. However, fully scaling this nascent capability across the fleet and integrating it into routine operations will be a complex and multi-year endeavor.
Munition Stockpiles
Beyond logistics, the long-term viability of DMO is fundamentally tied to the strength and responsiveness of the U.S. defense industrial base. While declining shipbuilding capacity poses a long-term strategic concern, urgent issues lie in the insufficient production and stockpiling of precision munitions necessary to support a high-end conflict.
Analyses of a potential war in the Western Pacific underscore the scale of demand. A RAND Corporation report estimates that 2,000 long-range precision munitions—including 1,200 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) and 800 Maritime Strike Tomahawks—would be expended within the first two months of combat. Furthermore, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments projects a daily consumption of 360 VLS cells, totaling over 10,000 cells in a single month. These rates would rapidly exhaust existing stockpiles and far outpace current U.S. production capacity, leading to a critical shortfall in sustained combat power.
Current procurement rates reflect this gap. In the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request, the Navy plans to acquire just 90 LRASMs and 22 Tomahawk missiles. To prepare for the demands of a potential high-end conflict, the Department of Defense must significantly expand munition procurement while ensuring resilient and secure supply chains. Conflict in the Western Pacific will expose vulnerabilities in America’s critical material supply chains—such as rare earth elements and semiconductors— and pose additional challenges to replenishment. A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that at surge production rates, it would take an average of 8.4 years to replace inventories from Major Defense Acquisition Programs, with missiles and shipbuilding facing the longest replacement timelines.
The Navy must adopt mitigation strategies that include near-, mid-, and long-term plans to increase munition stockpiles. These strategies must carefully balance trade-offs between production volume, technological sophistication, and manufacturing timelines to ensure both capacity and capability are preserved in a sustained conflict.
As the Navy moves to operationalize DMO, it must take deliberate, focused steps to ensure the concept becomes a viable combat framework. The current lack of specificity hampers the development of core elements and risks neglecting critical shortfalls in logistics and industrial support. To meet these challenges, the Navy must articulate a clear plan to enhance the survivability and responsiveness of its logistics fleet and establish forward rearming capabilities that enable sustained distributed operations. Concurrently, it must pursue aggressive, multi-horizon strategies to ensure a robust supply of precision munitions—accounting for the demands of scale, time, and industrial capacity. Without these foundational efforts, DMO risks remaining a conceptual aspiration rather than an operational reality—leaving the Navy ill-prepared for the demands of high-end maritime conflict against a peer adversary.
Julian Guevara is a student at the University of Washington, Seattle and a Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies IPI Cybersecurity Fellow.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.
Center for Maritime Strategy
By Julian Guevara
The emergence of peer competition and the increase of adversarial capability has driven the U.S. Navy to adopt the concept of Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) as a guiding framework for how it will fight the next high-end war at sea. DMO presents a compelling vision for building a combat-credible force capable of maintaining maritime dominance in a contested environment. However, to properly implement this concept, a more clearly defined and rigorous approach is essential. As the Navy works to modernize and operationalize DMO, it must address two critical sustainment challenges: (1) logistics and (2) munition stockpiles.
Defining DMO
DMO is a fleet-level warfighting concept that provides a modern framework for achieving large-scale sea control and power projection against peer competitors. Departing from the Navy’s traditional reliance on concentrated carrier strike groups, DMO responds to high-end threats by dispersing forces across wider areas while concentrating effects through networked operations. Through an agile and asymmetric approach, the concept employs kinetic and non-kinetic capabilities that leverage deception and distribute command, ultimately generating decision advantages that affect offensive and defensive operations.
The proliferation of advanced anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities has shaped the Navy’s shift toward long-range precision weapons and sophisticated sensor networks. By diversifying its shooter portfolio and spreading warships out, the Navy adapts its force structure to the changing perceptions of hider-finder competition while delivering capabilities that achieve lethal and persistent effects within the weapons engagement zone. As operational environments become more contested, DMO serves to increase survivability while achieving greater lethality. Through distribution the Navy employs nontraditional schemes of maneuver and force posturing to facilitate counter-targeting. Simultaneously, the distribution and integration of modern long-range fires called upon by DMO build dynamic kill chains that generate decision advantages and overwhelming fire through the aggregation of distributed commands that maintain unity of action.
To build enduring warfighting advantages, DMO must be translated into concrete, actionable measures. Without greater specificity, the Navy risks failing to identify and overcome the challenges that hinder the concept’s operational viability.
Sustainment Challenges
Logistics
To achieve combat viability, the United States Navy must prioritize overcoming the logistical hurdles posed by a widely distributed fleet. The core tenets of DMO—long-range fires and a distributed force structure—expose significant gaps in the Navy’s ability to sustain operations across vast and contested maritime domains.
The increased distance of warships heightens the vulnerability of the Combat Logistics Force (CLF). In a peer conflict, Indo-Pacific Command will require these essential but soft targets to operate deep within contested environments—where they would be highly susceptible to adversarial targeting. Drawing from the historical precedent of Japan’s failure to target U.S. logistics during the Pacific War, today’s adversaries are likely to prioritize degrading U.S. logistics to cripple naval operations. With a current shortage of surface combatants to escort logistics ships, the CLF must evolve. Future platforms will need to be faster and more survivable, equipped with advanced kinetic and non-kinetic self-defense systems to keep pace with and support the dynamic needs of a distributed fleet.
Additionally, the operational shift toward surface combatant strikes creates an unprecedented demand for long-range precision fires. High intensity conflict will rapidly deplete ship magazines, creating a critical need for forward rearmament of Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells during a protracted conflict. By achieving VLS rearming at sea, the Navy will be able to keep warships in theater while incorporating numerous mobile reload locations critical for sustaining and expanding the volume and tempo of long-range fires. The recent successful demonstration of the Transferable Reload At-sea Method on an underway warship marks a pivotal first step. However, fully scaling this nascent capability across the fleet and integrating it into routine operations will be a complex and multi-year endeavor.
Munition Stockpiles
Beyond logistics, the long-term viability of DMO is fundamentally tied to the strength and responsiveness of the U.S. defense industrial base. While declining shipbuilding capacity poses a long-term strategic concern, urgent issues lie in the insufficient production and stockpiling of precision munitions necessary to support a high-end conflict.
Analyses of a potential war in the Western Pacific underscore the scale of demand. A RAND Corporation report estimates that 2,000 long-range precision munitions—including 1,200 Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASM) and 800 Maritime Strike Tomahawks—would be expended within the first two months of combat. Furthermore, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments projects a daily consumption of 360 VLS cells, totaling over 10,000 cells in a single month. These rates would rapidly exhaust existing stockpiles and far outpace current U.S. production capacity, leading to a critical shortfall in sustained combat power.
Current procurement rates reflect this gap. In the Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request, the Navy plans to acquire just 90 LRASMs and 22 Tomahawk missiles. To prepare for the demands of a potential high-end conflict, the Department of Defense must significantly expand munition procurement while ensuring resilient and secure supply chains. Conflict in the Western Pacific will expose vulnerabilities in America’s critical material supply chains—such as rare earth elements and semiconductors— and pose additional challenges to replenishment. A study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies found that at surge production rates, it would take an average of 8.4 years to replace inventories from Major Defense Acquisition Programs, with missiles and shipbuilding facing the longest replacement timelines.
The Navy must adopt mitigation strategies that include near-, mid-, and long-term plans to increase munition stockpiles. These strategies must carefully balance trade-offs between production volume, technological sophistication, and manufacturing timelines to ensure both capacity and capability are preserved in a sustained conflict.
As the Navy moves to operationalize DMO, it must take deliberate, focused steps to ensure the concept becomes a viable combat framework. The current lack of specificity hampers the development of core elements and risks neglecting critical shortfalls in logistics and industrial support. To meet these challenges, the Navy must articulate a clear plan to enhance the survivability and responsiveness of its logistics fleet and establish forward rearming capabilities that enable sustained distributed operations. Concurrently, it must pursue aggressive, multi-horizon strategies to ensure a robust supply of precision munitions—accounting for the demands of scale, time, and industrial capacity. Without these foundational efforts, DMO risks remaining a conceptual aspiration rather than an operational reality—leaving the Navy ill-prepared for the demands of high-end maritime conflict against a peer adversary.
Julian Guevara is a student at the University of Washington, Seattle and a Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies IPI Cybersecurity Fellow.
The views expressed in this piece are the sole opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Center for Maritime Strategy or other institutions listed.